Before they were robots, they were "androids" or "automatons." The word "robot" is commonly accepted as having arrived in English through -- of all places -- a Czech play. "R.U.R." made its public debut in Prague 102 years ago, yesterday. It would arrive in the States a year and a half later, with Spencer Tracy making his nonspeaking Broadway debut as one of Rossum's titular Universal Robots. The playwright Karel Čapek humbly noted the following decade that he couldn't take full credit for the word's origin.

One of the most remarkable things about construction robotics is the sheer breadth of tasks that can potentially be automated. As I've noted before, the entire category is a prime target for robotics startups, given that it fills all of the big Ds of automation -- dull, dirty and (quite often) dangerous. It's also one of those areas that have become increasingly difficult to staff, post-pandemic, even as construction work came roaring back. So, if I'm running a fairly successful company that makes construction robots, I'm certainly thinking of diversification. The quickest way to jump start that is, of course, acquiring another, smaller startup.